Trans. One man has never seen Vaak, yet he sees; one man has hearing but has never heard her.

Vaak is lingua franca, speech. The objective of this quintet of 5 volumes is to unravel the lingua franca of Sarasvati civilization using the evidence provided by the Corpuses/Concordances of Indus Script Inscriptions and lexicons of over 25 ancient Indian languages.

Brahmi of later periods is the name of the writing system, speech encoded.

This work does not enter into a study of chronologies of speech and writing system of Vedic/Pali/Prakrits/Sanskrit/ Tamil/ Munda and other languages of ancient India and writings using Brahmi/Kharoshthi scripts on early punch-marked coin. The work also does not attempt to delineate stages in the evolution of Brahmi syllabic writing system (from early Brahmi of epigraphs through Siddhamaatrukaa). The unresolved research issues have been well-documented in Richard Salomon, 1995, On the origin of the early Indian scripts: a review article in Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995), 271-279. http://web.archive.org/web/20060516000049/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/position/salomon.html

It should, however, be noted that this Brahmi writing system is based on a brilliant theory of identifying and classifying sounds based on the locations of articulation from the lips/nose into the gullet.

Indus Script or Sarasvati writing system which is mostly pictorial, is also based on a brilliant, sound (pun intended) theory of pictographic writing to encode speech, a theory called rebus -- a theory based on which early writing systems such as, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphs or Akkadian cuneiform were invented and evolved.

Both vaak and brahmi are synonyms of Sarasvati of Indian tradition recognizing Sarasvati as personified knowledge. At the present state of knowledge, it cannot be said if the Brahmi/Kharoshthi writing systems were hieroglyphic derivations from Sarasvati hieroglyphs (also called Indus Script).

The focus of the work is on the early writing system commonly referred to as Indus Script and an early lingua franca called mleccha. The quintet in five volumes has, therefore, been called: Indus script encodes mleccha speech.

A personal ode, down the memory lane and a dedication

NB: An ode is related to Greek aude "voice, tone, sound," and in modern use, “a lyric poem, usually expressing exalted emotion in a complex scheme of rhyme and meter”

While attempting to present only verifiable, falsifiable evidence, the publication of this work is a tirthasthanam, in an emotional journey into mists of history of my ancestors who have bequeathed a legacy of extraordinary cultural significance for nearly 5000 years and hence, I call it a personal ode.

See photographs of two mementos (one mounted on wood and another on onyx – each 3 in. square paper-weight) which were given in 1978 to First Class passengers on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). Note the logo PIA (in English and in Urdu script) at the bottom of the wooden paper-weight with a mounted copper plate replica of a seal.

The paper pasted on the obverse of these mementos states: “Seals from Mohenjodaro 5000 years old. These seals have thrown an open challenge to the scholars to decipher their worth. Indus Valley Civilization flourished 5000 years ago in Pakistan. The inhabitants lived largely by agriculture but also maintained trade with lands as far away as Mesopotamia.”

These paper-weights have been lying on my desk ever since, for almost 30 years; with the inspiration provided by a letter from Dr. BV Subbarayappa who has compiled a magnum opus on Science and Technology in Ancient India, these mementos set me sail into the mists of history to better understand the ancient language spoken and the writing system. This work is the result of nearly 30 years of intense investigation and is presented to every child who remembers with fondness the great contributions made by savants such as Panini, Tolkappiyan, Bharata, Patanjali, Bhartruhari and hundreds of other rishis and munis, who have contributed, through their tapasya, to understanding the evolution of languages and culture in Bharatam which represents the continuum of this civilization which I call Sarasvati civilization because over 80% of the archaeological sites are on the banks of Vedic River Sarasvati. The so-called ‘priest-king’ is one such rishi who wears a pat.t.a, an uttariyam leaving the right-shoulder bare. It can now be confidently hypothesized that this rishi was in the lineage of the Vedic rishis of yore, purve yajnikaah, as Rigveda notes. As archaeological exploration proceeds, more evidences will unravel and every such evidence will be tested on this touchstone of discovery of mleccha and mlecchita vikalpa framed on the foundation of Indian Lexicon including Munda etyma so brilliantly compiled by Prof. D. Stampe based on earlier works of savants such as Pinnow and Sashibhushan Bhattacharya.

I dedicate this work to all children of present and future generations and to our pitru-s, our ancestors whenever we do sankalpam and offer tarpanam at Rama Setu in Setu and Agni teertham on Ashadha amavasya day every year. This I do with all humility and praying to Vidyaa Devi Sarasvati who is the metaphor for knowledge and who is also the river which nurtured a civilization on her laps, the banks of this great Vedic river venerated in almost every ancient text of Bharatam. If I fail in communicating to the children the stunning discovery of a writing system based on sound theory, the fault is entirely mine. I owe a debt of gratitude to many savants who have contributed to decipherment of the writing system, far too many to name individually. The life-time dedication by Shri Iravatham Mahadevan and Prof. Parpola have to be singled out and this work draws on their magnum opuses – concordances of Indus script inscriptions. But for the brilliant insights of hundreds of scholars, insights which, together, became a floodlight, this work would have been impossible. My pranaams to all of them and to the late Moropant Pingley, the late Padmashri Vakankar, Shri Haribhau Vaze and Prof. Shivaji Singh who have guided me and who are my gurus.

Waterlogging at Lohgad village of Sarsa district in Haryana http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2212/stories/20050617000507700.htm

It is imperative to ensure an effective surface and sub-surface drainage system in North-west Bharatam. Revival of River Sarasvati in Haryana between Mustafabad and Murtzapur is a first good step in this direction.

Bhakra dam and Indian Canals on the Indus River Tributaries Courtesy: Bhakra Beas Management Board http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/SRR/Volume13/sridhar.html

Agroha mound (Sarasvati civilization)

Rakhigarhi pot (Sarasvati civilization)

About Bhorsaidan

About 8 miles (13 kilometres) to the west of Thanesar towards Pehowa lies the Bhurirava Tank. Tradition associates the Place with treacherous murder of Bhurirava by A…

https://tinyurl.com/ybdytm9aSarasvati was a navigable waterway of seafaring merchants upto 2nd millennium BCE; evidence of यज्ञो वै मेधः, मेधा = धन Naigh.ii,10 Yajña is dhanam, wealth.I suggest that more core samples like the Rann of Kutch dhordo core samples taken by MS University geologists should be taken from other selected sites of Rann of Kutch, Binjor, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi to further refine the dates of the navigable Vedic River Sarasvati from 10k to 3K years. Full text of the brilliant report by MS Univ. geologists
is embedded for ready reference.

The river with over 2000 archaeological sites on the river basin had nurtured a civilization.

River Sarasvati with a basin of over 2000 archaeological sites of the Bronze Age civilization, was a navigable waterway upto 2nd millennium BCE (ca. 1900 BCE) as evidenced by wealth-producing metalwork trade transactions recorded on seals with Indus Script dated from ca. 3300 BCE. Some cultural markers are presented in this note. पोळ pōḷa, &…